Ocean's Breath Plateau who doesn't know what I'm talking about?

AW but for @Raiyuk. Other tags for reference.

First Brave One and now Seelie — Angel Oak, for the first time in her life, existed in a protracted state of fright. The adults were all busy either looking for the lost girl or comforting Miss Simbelmyne. Oh, they always had an eye out for the other pups — although, the seal hunter kids had been given license to go out and aid in the search — but it was clear they were all preoccupied.

Angel's own mother had held her very close this morning and made her promise to stay away from the borders before turning her loose. Angel could feel the eyes of the adults on her even as she wandered away from her sisters, and it was comforting despite how stifling it felt. It was a sharp turn from the freedom she'd experienced at the Great Hunt.

She was glad for it, though. Especially when she came across a scent she was sure shouldn't be there. Angel followed it warily, her fur bristling, until it led her to @Aditya. It seemed the strange male had stopped to talk to the elder for quite a while. Angel stopped, too, and tried to buoy the man's spirit with a promise to bring him fresh fish in the evening — so long as she could find an adult to accompany her on a trip to the shoreline.

But she moved on soon enough, seeking out the stranger amongst them. As she drew nearer, her hackles began to rise once more, even knowing that the man had been welcomed among them. She crept quietly through the brush anyway, hoping to catch the man unaware and watch him for a while. Perhaps she would find him doing something heinous, and she'd call for help and stop him from causing more trouble for their family.

After his discussion with the man at the healer's rendezvous, Raiyuk had gone back to work. He knew he needed to find a fresh place to build himself a lodge. It was an odd thought, as he had built his first one so close to his father's, and now that he was on the hunt for a second location he felt — well, liberated, in a way. Independent. He had been in-and-out of the village so frequently with his travels; hunting on his own often enough, content with his own company or those he encountered, so by all accounts Raiyuk had been independent for a while now. This somehow felt different. Maybe it was guilt? He still had not stopped to talk to Chakliux; the man had not been home at the first attempt, and by now Raiyuk was too busy with his own business to try again.

He had indeed found some place to begin building. It was quite a ways from the inhabited areas, among another cluster of old growth, with a segment of bare stone exposed along the western edge of what was accessible. Between that and the beach access, Raiyuk would be sequestered in a way that allowed entry through one path, and only one path.

As he began to test the soil with his claws, he found that the gravel closer to the stony wall was easier to manage. He surmised that digging a few caches for himself here would be a good start.

It was through this one path and one path only that Angel soon came upon the strange man. He was not so old as the rest of the men in this pack — perhaps of an age with Taggak, but bearing a more weatherbeaten frame. And, fortunately or unfortunately, he did not seem to be up to anything nefarious.

Angel watched him anyway, hiding her small frame as close as she dared amongst the brush. He was just... digging around, sorta. Calmly. Casually. As if he had a plan he believed in, but was in no great rush to see it done. The quiet air of competence he carried about him was reminiscent of most every man she knew — but she was fully absorbed by it in this moment, as captivated by the stranger as she'd often been by sunlight dancing on the waves.

Her paws grew numb the longer she sat. The girl shifted subconsciously, sending a shale stone tumbling down the rocky incline. A small gasp escaped her, and she tucked herself lower into the brush, hoping to remain unseen.

One of the pits he had dug held roots, and stones. He could not get very far without breaking them away individually. As Raiyuk began to do this, he employed the strength of his shoulders and the leverage of his low body, grasping and tugging. Finally one came loose; he felt a satisfying snap and dredged up one of the tendrils, tossing it aside. The moment after was quiet — except for a clattering of stones from behind him.

He stopped and turned, squinting against the sunlight for a moment, and listened. After a few moments of patience with this, and finding the sound did not repeat, he resumed his work.

The digging did not continue. He walked a little ways to another patch of stonework, like a small plateau, where bundles sat haphazardly. Raiyuk picked through some of these things. Aditya had not recognized much. He was disheartened, and did not know who else to ask. For now, Raiyuk arranged some of the fine stones, being careful enough to clean and place them so they could sit in the sun, and so they would not be lost in the shuffling of things.

When she was not yet discovered, Angel breathed a sigh of relief. She listened to the clatter of his activities and, when she determined he was sufficiently distracted, lifted her head to peek at him again. Now he was working not just with his paws, but with some small trinkets that immediately caught her eye. There had been many traders at the Great Hunt, but she had not been afforded many chances to examine their wares.

She gathered her courage for a long moment before coming out of hiding.

"Who are you?" she asked him, trying to make herself look tall. He seemed perfectly at ease here and had thus far done nothing wrong, but she was wary of him all the same. She decided it would be silly not to be.

One of the stones was a shard of beryl. Where had it come from? A trader on the road, far from here. Beyond that, Raiyuk had no idea. It might have been valuable to the right person—but to the trader it had been worth a story of home, which Raiyuk had told eagerly, and now he had this shiny stone to display.

As the girl emerged from hiding, Raiyuk's careful arrangement is sent rolling. He's surprised to find himself watched; and that initial spook makes him nudge the stone, which rolls off the flat stone escarpment and in to the dirt. Maybe one of the holes, maybe the grass — its gone, either way.

Ah! The man exclaims as he looks from the girl to his collection, and then to the earth underheel. Where'd that go? His focus was on the stone, so he hadn't fully registered her question. As he got to hunting among the greenery that choked the earth, he answered: I'm Raiyuk, son of — Chakliux — where'd that... He pulled up some of the grass with his teeth, but no rock to be found.

A little to the right, he sniffs the soil as if the beryl might carry the trader's scent; but there too, no luck.

He needn't have gone on; Angel's expression cleared as soon as he spoke his name, which was instantly familiar to her. Chakliux, too, was a trusted figure in her life even if they rarely spoke directly to one another. This was the son she'd heard him speak of with such pride; Angel was immediately more impressed by him, as she had often wondered if her parents might one day speak of her the way that Chakliux spoke of his grown-up son.

"Sorry!" she said quickly, seeing the trouble that she'd caused. She hurried closer, hoping to find the trinket herself. Would he be annoyed with her for losing it in the first place, or grateful for the help? She imagined the latter scenario, which led them naturally into a beach excursion. She would impress him there, too, with her budding skill as a fisher. And then she would give the fish to Aditya, and she would tell him about what a grand adventure it had been.

She'd seen just a flash of it as it tumbled from its place, but she thought she'd seen where it landed. She made a beeline for that place, cutting off Raiyuk without meaning to in her haste to resolve the situation. She pushed her narrower muzzle into the grass and scissored her teeth until she pinched something hard between her incisors.

Jerking upright once more, she held the pink stone out to Raiyuk.

"Zis fing?" she asked, speaking through her carefully clenched teeth.

The stone was lost! He was resigned, nearly giving up the search as the girl cut across his investigation to grapple something close. As she raised up, the rose pink of the morganite gleamed among her teeth.

Oh! Well done, yes. Could you put it here? He stepped aside and showed off the little altar of gifts. Other stones were present, and bundled plants, and the sugar-cane which Aditya had not known what to do with.

You have a good eye.

The seaborn girl's spirit burned bright under such praise, and her mouth went slack in a way that suggested something she'd always suspected had been confirmed for her. She did have a good eye.

Somewhere in this development, the pebble almost fell back into the sedge. Angel grappled briefly with it and then hurried after the young man, hoping he hadn't seen.

When the treasure was placed safely amongst his fellows, Angel allowed herself to relax again, and finally, to study Raiyuk up close. The difference in height forced her to look up at him, and something about this made her feel queasy and flustered in a way that was not altogether pleasant, but thrilling all the same. She forced her eyes back down to the treasure trove, and almost at once, found her focus shifting.

"Wow," she said quietly, admiring all the pretty colors and interesting scents. Her mind went to her own collection of colorful seashells — would Raiyuk find them interesting? — but soon enough, she was planted firmly in the present once more. "Did you collect them?" she asked, reaching out a paw as if to touch the nearest stone. She hesitated at the last moment and tried to play it off as... well, no telling. She failed to play it off and ended up making an even weirder gesture in the process.

She nearly dropped it a second time, which made him tense, but then all was together again and there was nothing to worry about. Besides the morganite there was something that looked like slate, with inclusions of a deep mossy green. There was a small red stone as well which was only weathered glass, but it had intrigued Raiyuk, so he had kept it.

The girl looked over his collection and seemed pleased by it, a feeling which Raiyuk fed off of in proximity. To her question he answered, Yes. I travel and trade, and sometimes stay with hunters far from here. They pay me in knowledge and sometimes, things like these stones.

It was possible that Raiyuk was taken advantage of in these arrangements and didn't know it. Everything outside of the village was different, enthralling even.

Do you like them?

It was the red stone that most intrigued Angel. Her fascination with it briefly outshined her fascination with Raiyuk himself. She imagined the life he told her of, painting it in hues as rosy as his treasures — strange wolves talking quietly under starlight, or perhaps laughing a bawdy tales like the ones she was sure she hadn't been meant to overhear at the Great Hunt.

"I do, very much!" she replied, her breath catching as she imagined another scene. One more like what she'd heard that Sunshine girl singing about — a man running to find a gift —

Both daydreams intrigued her endlessly. She lifted her murky yellow eyes back to the seal hunter's face.

"You must have so many stories," she said, and suddenly, she ached deeply to follow in his footsteps; her own likeness replaced his in one of the daydreams. Then, after a second's thought, the scene was rearranged to include him once more.

He thought it might be nice to gift her a stone, and almost immediately he found himself reminded of the Deer People, which gave him pause and made him reconsider. They weren't gifts meant to be passed around; he intended to show them to Rodyn or to carry them to Moonglow and see what could be bartered there; maybe go farther if there was no interest, he was not yet sure.

The girl did not seem to notice his slight pause, but she was interested in where he'd been.

I have some, yes. He wondered if that was her way of asking for one? As it was fresh in his mind, Raiyuk would go on to explain the stones themselves, and the sugar-cane that sat nearby.

These all come from the Deer People. They have another name, but it is a word I struggle with. Their languge is... different. It sounds like many hooves on stones. This was a detail that might not intrigue the girl, yet Raiyuk couldn't help but include it. They are masterful hunters. Their gifts are precious to them, and they do not give them out without a reason. The stones were from two hunters I met and befriended, or so he'd like to think, and their father shared these plants with me, he motions to the sugar-cane.

To Angel Oak, what he shared next was story enough. Having come to know about the moon people, she was better primed than she might otherwise have been to understand that deer people probably looked like regular wolves. Her mind went to some interesting hybrid all the same, but the idea did not stick with her long.

She listened raptly to his description of them, her mouth popping open into a little 'o' at the detail about their speech. She could not imagine how that would sound. Did they stomp their paws? Click rocks together? Or did they make these sounds with their mouths?

The way that he spoke of these deer people, Angel Oak knew that she, too, wanted to be a masterful hunter and a giver of great gifts. Dreams of receiving a present from Raiyuk fled her mind; now she wanted to find something wonderful to add to this pile.

"What are they?" she asked of the plants, leaning forward to give them a sniff. "It smells sweet, like blueberries." Only not nearly so tart. Angel Oak wanted to chew on it, but she knew better than to ruin something so precious like that.

She was curious of the plants.

I do not know, to be honest. He recalled being given these, and it had felt like a secret. The two he had befriended had not known of the gift, and their father had told him to keep the odd sticks close; that was all he thought of them at the time.

They are not so different from branches in the forest. But when I carried them alone, they were almost... Sweet? Not like berries, which were sweet and tart and sometimes too bitter for his tongue, but purely bright tasting. It was hard to describe!

Raiyuk gave a small chuckle. The man that gave them, he said they were very important to his people. He said I had earned them—I think. I learned only a little of their language. He gave a sheepish lift of his shoulders.